S.F. homeless earn paychecks for work as film extras / New 'movie stars' make $8.62 an hour, gain recognition and self-esteem boost

homelessmovie074_ward.jpg
Theo White, a homeless man, often performs his yoga on the streets of San Francisco to make a little money...he was seen by the film people who invited him to be an extra in the movie.
A new movie being shot in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco is called "The Pursuit of Happiness." It stars Will Smith as a homeless man who becomes a success. Over 200 homeless people have been hired as extras for the film which is being shot in and around Glide Memorial Church.
10/6/05 less

homelessmovie074_ward.jpg
Theo White, a homeless man, often performs his yoga on the streets of San Francisco to make a little money...he was seen by the film people who invited him to be an extra in the ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

Photo: Brant Ward

Image
1of/5

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 5

homelessmovie074_ward.jpg
Theo White, a homeless man, often performs his yoga on the streets of San Francisco to make a little money...he was seen by the film people who invited him to be an extra in the movie.
A new movie being shot in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco is called "The Pursuit of Happiness." It stars Will Smith as a homeless man who becomes a success. Over 200 homeless people have been hired as extras for the film which is being shot in and around Glide Memorial Church.
10/6/05 less

homelessmovie074_ward.jpg
Theo White, a homeless man, often performs his yoga on the streets of San Francisco to make a little money...he was seen by the film people who invited him to be an extra in the ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

S.F. homeless earn paychecks for work as film extras / New 'movie stars' make $8.62 an hour, gain recognition and self-esteem boost

1 / 5

Back to Gallery

Theo White sleeps shivering in a doorway littered with broken glass on O'Farrell Street in San Francisco's Tenderloin -- but lately things haven't seemed quite so bad when he wakes and shuffles to his usual panhandling spots.

That's because now he's famous. On his stomping grounds, at least.

So are about 200 other homeless and poor people sprinkled throughout the alleyways and cheap hotels of San Francisco's grittily picturesque skid row.

They've all been paid extras over the past two months in actor Will Smith's latest movie, a based-on-fact biopic on the life of Chris Gardner, who was homeless in the Tenderloin in the early 1980s and crawled up to become a millionaire stockbroker.

Two decades later, Gardner has returned with Hollywood crews in tow to give back to the place where he was once penniless. The people who seem most appreciative are the ones sleeping in the streets he used to call home.

Producers of the movie, "Pursuit of Happyness" -- the misspelling is intentional -- are hiring White and his fellow sudden actors to give a realistic context to Gardner's portrayal of street-life despair. For most, it's the only money they've earned in years.

"First time I've been paid with a check since ... well, I don't know how long," said White, sunning in his usual doorway, on O'Farrell near Jones Street. "And all I had to do was what I do -- hang out. Easy cash."

As he talked he slapped high-fives with people passing by, smiling while they called out, "Hey, celebrity!"

Most of the extras do background duty in soup lines or on the sidewalks at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, a central setting in the film, but the 40-year-old White brought a little something special to his role. He stood on his head, balanced on a glass soda bottle, which usually fetches a few bucks from tourists when he does it for 10 minutes or more at a time around Union Square.

It's actually part of his yoga practice, he said, taking a moment from helping his wife write "Homeless -- please help" on a cardboard sign to demonstrate the skill with a huge, upside-down grin.

"And for this, they paid me," he said, flipping back to his feet again. "I stood on my head off and on for eight hours a few weeks ago on California Street while Will Smith's double walked up and down the street in front of me."

White got $8.62 an hour for his one day of work, minimum wage in San Francisco. That's what the other 199 homeless people got, too, standard pay for extras who don't work often enough to be in the Screen Actors Guild.

The filming work comes in off-and-on spurts, usually one or two days of shooting for the extras -- so nobody's getting rich, and the check-cashing places they have to use bite at least 3 percent off the top as a service charge. The $50 to $100 here and there helps buy a night in a residential hotel room and a good meal, or a little crack and booze for those so inclined.

"The cash isn't everything," said one panhandler, who goes by the street handle "Bone" and was hoping to score a background role this weekend. "Just working for a few hours reminds you that maybe someday you can get your butt out of the TL (Tenderloin), off the street, do something else with your life."

Gardner, 50, and the man who helped rescue him and his infant son from the streets all those years ago, the Rev. Cecil Williams, said it's been both wrenching and exhilarating to be part of a Hollywood immersion. San Francisco has already has been getting a lot of attention both for having the most visible homeless crisis in the nation and starting some of the more innovative approaches to solving it -- but this spotlight with the cameras is something bizarre and new for everyone involved.

"It's so cool that the money for this movie is getting all the way down to their level on the street," said Gardner, who strolls the movie sets with Smith -- who plays him in the film -- shaking hands and chatting with street people. "I love spending time with them, and the good thing it's doing for me is helping create good memories to replace the bad, old ones.

"Before, I'd walk to places in the Tenderloin and remember, 'This is where the stroller broke down, or where I got into that bad situation,' " Gardner said. "But now it's like, 'This is where we shot this scene -- this is where good things happened.' "

Back in 1981, Gardner tumbled to the street when his common-law wife ditched him and their infant son and he lost his job. He slept in bus stations, bathrooms and anywhere else he could find until he wound up at Glide's homeless shelter.

There, he impressed Williams with his dedication to his baby, and the two struck up a friendship that has lasted through Gardner's personal odyssey of training to become a stockbroker. He climbed from entry-level job to supervisor and eventually to owner of a luxury townhouse in New York's Trump Tower and his own brokerage in Chicago.

That didn't mean Williams got an automatic spot in the film, though, the minister said with a laugh. The 76-year-old Williams isn't the slim hipster he was back then, leading the congregation in rock-tinged services that included celebrities from Bill Cosby to Joan Baez, and the producers needed to be convinced he could muster up the same energy today.

"I had to audition for the part of playing myself before they signed me for the gig," Williams said. He rubbed his balding head and sighed. "They make me wear a wig. But it's so much fun."

The best part of the filming, though, is how the homeless are being treated, he said.

"What has happened in this experience, first and foremost, is that the people were regarded as human beings," Williams said. "They're not looked down upon. They know the scene here, and that helps them show it as they act.

"So not only do they get to be in a movie, but they get paid. They get respect."

One more remarkable thing, said Glide Human Services Director Calvin Gipson -- who helped assemble most of the extras -- is how punctual the extras have been. Homeless folks are notoriously bad at showing up on time, and poor people are often busy rushing to job or governmental aid appointments that, if missed, can mean disaster.

"They've been great actors, completely responsible," Gipson said. "And it's not just for the paychecks. This has really boosted their self-esteem."

Ward Loggins, 46, spent 12 hours one day last week pushing a shopping cart and scrounging trash from the gutter in front of Glide while star Smith shot a scene in the soup line. Loggins stands in that same soup line many days for lunch and was homeless before landing a residential hotel room a few months ago -- and he said being in the film goes way beyond the money.

"It's very important that they show all the sides of homelessness like this," he said. "There's so much stereotyping about them, but they are not just dirty, dumpster-diving crack smokers. They're human beings. Like me. Like you will see in this movie."